Sunday, February 21, 2010

Conservatism

I saw a CNN segment on the internet this morning about Dr. Ron Paul getting chosen as the presidential candidate in a straw poll at the CPAC convention held in Washington.

The CNN reporter tried to explain it did not mean Dr. Paul would have a real chance to run or be chosen at all, but it was a symbolic indication of the direction conservatism was taking. Then, smirking, he gave a thumbnail sketch of what, in his opinion, those specifics were.

I think the reporter is right, we conservatives want smaller government, MUCH smaller and MUCH less spending. He's wrong in saying most Americans want bipartisan solutions. They don't–– not now! I think most Americans of all sensibilities are too distrustful and fearful of our central government (is there any other at the moment?) as it presently stands. And if you fear something and don't trust it the first thing you want to do if you can is stop it. If you can't your only choices is to have it overcome you or get out of its way. If that must be chosen in the near future emigration not immigration will become a national dilemma.

First and foremost, polls show clearly most Americans want government to stop ruining our lives by spending us into oblivion. The debt the political classes create, both state and national, to buy votes for themselves is OUR debt that must be paid back by US, not them. They spend like crazy contrary to our protestations. They do not spend for us, but for themselves. They seek to stay in power by buying our votes through largess: it's bread and circuses for the masses.

People like Dr. Paul have not only gotten that message, but have and do embody it and apply it; Pelosi, Reid and company have not and never will, sad to say.

The reporter neglected to say most Americans feel government has gone too far––– way too far, and is doing things for us and to us that is destroying our liberty and putting us in danger.

He smirks about conservatism and its goals as he speaks, as if its goals are temporary and arbitrary, like those of his own progressive darlings, but he forgets the object of republican conservatism: the Constitution.

It may be news to many, especially in Washington, but last I checked the Constitution is still the law of the land.

Rather than a seemingly arbitrary appearing laundry list of conservative goals, the reporter could have simply said, had he known, we conservatives want our Constitutional proportions restored, along with the delicate balance between state and national sovereignty. We want these things above all else, because our specific ills are not the cause but the effect of having abandoned them. Trying to cure these ills piecemeal, one at a time by means of the so-called art of political bipartisan compromise is simply Quixotic madness. There are more ways than one to skin a cat, but some ways are simply impossible, and today's bipartisanship is one of them.

Effects can only be stopped by neutralizing causes. Bad causes can only be neutralized by instituting good ones.

This knowledge is why conservatives eschew the politics of bipartisan compromise. The liberal press says we are inflexible and don't want solutions. Sure we do. But we don't believe those who created the problems are the proper agents to devise the solutions. They've already proven that post-crisis. With them, it's just business as usual, keeping on keeping on, deflecting blame and denying responsibility for every thing other than those things that appear to have turned out really peachy---at least for the moment.

If our smirking, dauntless young reporter sincerely wanted to understand the real dilemma I'd first try to explain to him that those whom he refers condescendingly to as "conservatives" are not really conservatives. That's just a label of modern convenience. Personally, I don't know what it means. Like every invention for modern positions the real meaning is elusive and slippery. Like most modern labels it's not meant to point to real meaning but obscure it.

When we look at the actual substance of what we so-called conservatives want we would see that if everyone in America alive in 1790, except Hamiltonian monarchists, were alive today we would call them conservatives––there were no liberals as we know them today. If we who are called conservatives today were alive in 1790 we would not be called conservatives; we'd be called Americans. And it would be understood we, through our representatives and then by direct vote have accepted, believe in and follow our new Constitution.

Compromise then:
Our leaders at that time sought to find a path of growth and development under the powers and limitations set by that nomocratic document. Then, honorable compromise was possible, because the possible abusive consequences of any arrived at solution would be ameliorated by common adherence constitutional limitations. In other words, the Constitution would limit debate, limit solutions, limit application and help prevent abuses of liberty by doing the most important thing it was meant to do: chain down and limit centralized power.

It's limitations were not negative only. Implicit in every "no" there is a "yes." And the limitational "nos" of the Constitution were all meant to say one thing to the citizens who lived under its protection, "Yes to your liberty!"

If a proposed good robbed us of our liberty the cost was too high. The modern statists still haven't gotten today this message today: guess what? The cost is still too high. And without the embrace of this understanding honorable bipartisanship and the art of political compromise can only bring about more confusion, waste and abuse.

Particulars be damned! What is needed is a fundamental philosophical change, a return to Constitutional norms to rein back the statist tyranny that began in 1861 found full flowering in 20 century Progressivism.

Let me put it simply for our dear young teleprompter reader posing as a journalist. Today, we're not looking at two political classes that believe we should interpret the Constitution from somewhat different perspectives. We have one class (called conservatism) that believes we should follow the Constitution and govern by its mandates and obey its limitations. A second class of our leaders hate the Constitution, pays no heed to the Constitution (unless they are absolutely forced to), and seeks to govern by their own arbitrary sense of things at the moment. In their view the Constitution and the Founders can be damned; their goal must be achieve regardless of the collateral cost or consequences.

In other words, the other political class is made up of Jacobin-style revolutionaries, iconoclasts, who want to replace the Constitution and the measured Rule of Law it imposes with the whimsical rule of men. This kind of rule has always had a name in the past and it inexorably leads to a singular form of rule. It's called Tyranny, and those who practice it are called Tyrants. It, obviously, leads to autocratic rule, with all other government entities and departments simply being rubber stamps for the will of the strong man. This kind of rule, to which present bipartisanship is leading, is not only unamerican; it's inhuman! What compromise can be found with it that doesn't corrupt, debase and enslave?!? Dr. Paul has been called "Dr. No" because of his voting record against these abuses. Every "no" to a particular proposed law Dr. Paul has cast has also been a de facto "yes" to Constitutional norms and to our liberty and freedom. But I have grave doubts our dear young reporter has been trained to think in the sufficient number of steps to even be aware of such a possibility, much less consider it plausible.

Indeed, from the smirks of the reporter I could see he was as ignorant of these things as all the other miseducated idiots that are churned out of the journalism schools of the government propaganda media machines we call "institutions of higher learning."

He misses one other important fact as he flashes his smirks of superior vision over the air waves: Rejecting the Constitution and embracing the arbitrary rule of man is to do nothing less than hoist your own liberty on your own petard; to actively engage in assisting your statist masters in sawing the very limb upon which your freedom rests off the Tree of Liberty.

Of course, this reporter is clearly just another unthinking empty-suite teleprompter reader and ripe and ready to gleefully dance into a Chinese communist-style work/re-education camp for a refresher course in groveling and advanced classes in toadieism, just like the good subject of an all-powerful Imperial Force should.

As for we Constitutionalists moderns labeled as "conservatives,"we have a singular message to the progressive and neocon statist: work with us toward restoration of liberty or get the Hell out of America and go some where else to live under tyrants–––you'll find a wide array of choices.
The Armadillo

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